Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Beatings and forced abortions: Life in a North Korea prison
Ever since the Korean Peninsula was divided at the 38th parallel in 1953, numbers of North Koreans defected or tried to defect to their southern counterpart. Each year, more than one thousand defectors, over 70% are female, succeed to reach South Korea. Hunger, oppression, and political violence to name a few for the cause of those defections. Many of those defectors cross the Chinese border into Jilin and Liaoning provinces in northeast China, go through the country secretly to the southern borders to reach Thailand to ask for defection. Those who are captured in China are treated as illegal economic migrants and sent back to North Korea. Once returned, they face harsh interrogations and years of punishment, or even death, in political prison camps or in reeducation camps. Even those who only try to watch foreign videos or access web content are also put into such facilities for a long time. What are those prisons like? According to one defector, she was forced to sit cross-legged with her hands on her knees as long as 12 hours a day. Can you imagine what it’s like to sit on the floor in the same pose all day? But that’s just part of their day.
Read the article and see the images and the video to learn about the inhumane conditions of North Korea’s prison.
No comments:
Post a Comment